dreams

Aspiration is “a hope or ambition of achieving something,” such as we see with the #RelationshipGoals tags on social media. Not surprisingly, our hopes and goals are sometimes reflected in the stories we write or the books we read.

Last week, we talked about discovering the essence of our character, but what about the essence of our story. What makes a story idea the one we want to tell? And why does understanding our story’s essence matter?

Do we need to write a million words before we can master the skills of writing? Maureen Crisp, a judge for a major book award with entries from debut and veteran authors, knows what it takes to be a writing master.

Writers often suffer from self-doubt. We’re not sure if our story idea is interesting enough, if we’re the right person to write our idea. All that self-doubt can lead us to reject ourselves before others do—or before they even can.

When faced with the many decisions of writing our story, the best choice is whatever tells the story we want to tell, but what does that mean? Let’s take a look at what storytelling really is and how we can improve our skills.

Part of being an author is finding and marketing our book to readers who will love our story. If we think like a business person, we can see how the launching of a new book has many similarities to how businesses launch a new product.